The airline industry is undergoing drastic change, heralded both by the economy and new advancements in technology. And with very small profit margins, airlines are always looking for ways to save money.
One way to do that is to make airplanes lighter, which can be a serious saver of fuel costs across a fleet over time–for instance, one journalist calculated that just carrying one fewer bags of peanuts on flights for a year would save an airline $2,000 in fuel costs. Airlines have been known to powerwash their engines to remove dirt in order to save money. But shaving off weight savings is difficult when you can’t compromise on the highly regulated technical components of an aircraft, or control the weight of your passengers or their luggage. Instead, aerospace engineers look for marginal gains they can make in other areas of the plane, including the design of the interiors and the seats.